


Vicious Cycle

by SonglordsBug



Series: Brooklyn Darcy [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, Hydra (Marvel), They love each other so much, all the feels, but they're so broken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 12:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16953723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonglordsBug/pseuds/SonglordsBug
Summary: How Isobel "Darcy" Delaney plays Bucky keepaway with HYDRA for 70 years.





	Vicious Cycle

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposting from stumblr

Over the years they develop a routine.

The first year or so after Hydra steals Bucky away again there is nothing. They have to take that much time to reprogram and rewipe him. This period makes Belle the most anxious, she knows that given the fact that over and over again Hydra has gone to the effort to take him back, they are not then going to kill him, but the year or two with no sightings, no contact, it’s like living with a weight on her chest.

That weight is lifted when she sees signs that he’s out and about, but it ushers in the most frustrating period. Bucky made her promise that she wouldn’t go after him as soon as he started being sent on missions. Made her promise to wait another year or two until the programming started easing, until Hydra drops its guard again.

And there’s an irony in their cut off one head two shall rise creed because the new heads sure don’t learn any of the lessons taught to the old head, they just make the same mistakes over and over again. So Belle waits, and knows that while she waits they are forcing Bucky to do horrible things, things he will hate himself for.

Finally there is a shift, something that tells her that now is the time. Then life becomes a race, trying to predict where and when and who is next, trying to get there in time, trying to find Bucky.

And then when she finds him, she has approaching him down to an art form. Do it slowly, no sneaking up on him, no weapons or tech. Just herself, hands at her side, speaking quietly and calmly, not in English, or Russian, or any other language but Gaelic, the language their mothers spoke, the language he used to tell tales of old, the language that means home and family.

He has come with her every time.

She takes him away to a quiet house-apartment-cottage and holds him and talks to him and waits until there is a man looking out of his eyes, not a weapon. And then she argues with him until she at least halfway convinces him that he is not responsible for the actions of the weapon. She argues until the boy she grew up with is looking out of world-weary eyes at her, mouth curling in a wry smile as he grumbles something about being too stubborn for her own good.

And then one of them leaves.

Because this is the real tragedy. Even when they have come back to one another and are no longer a weapon and a wanderer there is a space, empty and raw like a wound. If they stay together they will snap and snarl around this space and make each other miserable, so they don’t. Sometimes they are only a few doors down from each other, sometimes there’s half a world between them, but at least they have phones and they are free to visit each other.

Eventually Hydra will catch up to Bucky again and take him away and the cycle restarts. Belle wonders often while waiting for the weapon to reappear how many times they will do this and whether either of them will ever find peace. 

(She doesn’t know that someday she will be going by the name Darcy and a man will find both of them and slot himself into their empty space, the one she thought they would never fill, the one the man himself made back when he was just a boy from Brooklyn who didn’t like bullies and Bucky and Belle spent all their time getting him out of trouble.)


End file.
